The Silent Heart
Chapter Four
Honey Bee

- mirage -

When Ed finally awoke Hohenheim was in the kitchen making pork chops. Hohenheim heard the squeak of the day bed and stepped into the main room in time to watch Ed raise a hand to his face and rub sleepily at his eyes. Ed scrubbed the right thoroughly before moving to the left and yawning.

"Hohenheim?" Ed called, voice faint, and barely above a whisper. He glanced about the apartment with half asleep curiosity, and relaxed on sight of Hohenheim's tall frame near the dinner table. "What time is it?"

"Late," Hohenheim said, studying Ed's pale expression. "I am making pork chops for supper."

"Oh?" Ed pulled Christopher's shirt upward to his shoulders and began single handedly pulling his head through the neck hole. Curiously Hohenheim watched Ed struggle to drag the shirt to his shoulders with the anticipation of one watching a cork approach its pop from a bottle. Ed tugged at the cotton and wiggled his arm in with a heavy breath before pulling it down his chest and stomach with a satisfied smile.

"How's the fit?" Hohenheim asked.

Ed gave his stomach an approving rub. "Not too bad."

Hohenheim returned to the kitchen and continued mashing the potatoes he'd peeled and boiled. "I was sleeping all day?"

"Yes."

"Just one day, right? I saw you this morning?" Ed's voice became a bit strained.

"Yes."

The change in Ed's voice and sound of his labored breath brought Hohenheim quickly to the kitchen threshold. Finding Edward here in Germany was like discovering the front door to his Resembool farmhouse in a snow covered Munich alley. It brought a sense of assaulting invasion as much as a responsibility he wasn't certain he ever remembered having. It was the responsibility for the two life forms he had created with Trisha. As if the palpable human world drew him into a form of Nuclear Fusion and Nuclear Fission faster than he could comprehend, and somehow with the use of his own participation. From the weighted unit nucleus of himself and Trisha, split the two smaller nuclei of Edward and Alphonse, and like a scientist staring in through a microscope, he felt both the technical concern of a researcher whose subjects are in danger, and the heart and soul of his human self raging for possession of its offspring. How could he explain this to Edward? He had never been strong with the human attributes he still had left. So he did not feel he could tell Ed he feared Ed's proton quantity changing him into a different chemical element when he wanted them to stay the same. It was his first thought when Trisha handed him a living blanketed bundle of soft and shriveled human skin covered in the liquid of her womb.

It was being blessed.

And then the baby began to cry.

It was being doomed.

And she decided the best name for him: Edward.

In the day bed Ed was kicking the quilt down himself before shoving the loose pants off next. "Stay in the kitchen!" Ed yelled, fussing to get his ankle free from the blankets. Hohenheim didn't answer and watched Ed curl his flesh leg up to his chest in order to work the ankle of Christopher's pants onto it with one hand. The way Ed's severed thigh lay heavy and abandoned was intense. The leg had been cut at such an odd place, too high to be knee, and too low to be anything else but mid thigh. Somehow Ed had half a thigh, and like the shoulder the bottom was rippled with scars and misshapen lumps as if someone had tried to hack Ed's leg off with a La Gradina marble chisel.

With Ed rocking his hips from side to side as he pulled his pants up, Hohenheim returned to the potatoes and flavored them with butter. He lowered the heat on the pork chops and, confirming with a quick peek Ed was now settled, approached the boy.

Ed lay in the sheets recovering from his exertion wearing a disinterested look of mild irritation. He was none too impressed with Hohenheim's arrival. Wearing a white undershirt and brown corduroy pants, Christopher's clothing was still two sizes too big making Ed look small and slimsy.

"Ed, let's get you up," Hohenheim said kindly. He gestured to the wheelchair but Ed ignored it and bristled with offense. "Edward." They had to be practical about things. Hohenheim reached down and gently placed a hand on Ed's bony shoulder. "You've been in my care since last night." He offered a kind smile. "You're going to have to use the facilities sooner or later."

Ed's disposition didn't improve. "Don't lift me anymore," Ed commanded. He pressed his hand to the mattress and slowly raised his top half. "I move myself, understand?" Hohenheim didn't see how Ed thought he'd get himself from the bed. "Just bring the chair to the side." Ed jutted his chin toward the space at his bedside and Hohenheim angled the chair there. "I don't want you carrying me about, got it?" Ed asked, backing his hips to the side of the bed. "I can still move under my own power." Hohenheim didn't think what Ed was capable of could really be defined as moving. He found it very hard to keep his hands on the chair when Ed neared the edge of the bed while so unstable.

Quickly, Ed deliberately pushed to rock his top half away from the edge of the bed, and with his flesh arm free of its constant requirement to help hold him up, reached back and secured a tight grip on the arm of the wheelchair. Stable and now attached to the chair, Ed pulled himself backward with the intent to drag himself right into it. Hohenheim was amazed and was so consumed with watching Ed move his body, he didn't notice the strained expression on Ed's face until the boy was starting to sweat. Immediately he reached to help Ed transfer his weight, but Ed snapped at him. "Don't!" Ed ordered, beginning fast heavy pants. "I can do it! Don't touch me!" Ed said viciously. "I am not kidding Hohenheim. I don't want you to touch me." Hohenheim retracted his hand with a heavy swallow.

Ed was a dog nearly foaming at the mouth. There was an intense and intimidating emotion trying to rear its head, and Ed was struggling to keep it from doing so. However confusing it seemed to Hohenheim, he understood they were existing at a place directly below Ed's breaking point, and that it was only Ed's harmless appearance which implied, in a very misleading way, that his raw, and weakly contained rage, could not truly exist when it did.

Ed was determined, and ignored Hohenheim completely while dragging himself slowly, toiling with the dead weight of his body, to the edge of the seat. Here Ed paused, panting heavily and glancing about himself to confirm he was properly aligned before kicking fast, with his flesh leg, and knocking himself back into chair.

It was impressive.

Ed collapsed, heaving breaths, in a limp slump within the chair. "See?" Ed whispered, when he felt able.

With his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open, Ed was deep in recovery before he lifted his hand and rubbed at his face. He was coming back to the moment and realizing how much moving to the chair had taken out of him. Again his hand was trembling and his stomach had tightened with illness. Ed looked at the vacant day bed and the two feet of space he'd crossed. His healthy leg still lay on the mattress, and it was disturbing to the most horrific degree to think he couldn't easily, or even safely, manage a two foot space. What had happened to him? Cautiously he brought his hand to his chest and felt his sternum. He had pain springing from below the bone as surely as if his lungs had a tumor rooting outward from the very center. It was sucking everything up: his breath, his energy, his strength. Ed dropped his hand to the arm of the wheelchair and tried to relax. He tried to blame his weakened state on his travels, on the search for the stone, on whatever must have been happening to send him here, but he was haunted with the terrifying idea it was this world. That here in this place, this Edward, was so weak he could barely move. Amestris would represent the opposite, where he'd done more moving than he even thought possible. Just the hinting idea he could no longer do so brought a dizzying nausea.

Hohenheim reached down and rested a hand in Ed's hair. Ed's bullheaded strength made him smile with pride, but Ed was oblivious. Ed was staring off at nothing and had gone completely silent. Gently Hohenheim ran his hand backward pulling Edward's bangs from his face and caressing them into Ed's hair. "I used to do this when you were younger," he said softly, repeating the movement in a soft stroking manner. Repeating an action he'd done a decade ago was so powerful he could almost smell the fields of Resembool. "At home."

"Hm." Ed made a small sound of acknowledgement and lifted his gaze slightly. "Home," Ed repeated thoughtfully. He spoke the word softly in a longing tone before his mind felt assaulted with images that exploded into place as violently as if he'd been shoved face first into a projector. Ed winced with the sudden mental rape. There was the distinctly sweet smell of laundry drying in the wind, the heat of the summer sun, the blue sky of Resembool, and the crickets at night. He felt the sinus tickle from Winry's natural scent, heard the sound of Alphonse's armor, the bustle of Central's city, and the baritone of Roy's voice. Home was a mental collision of life, his life, and Ed clenched his eyes when he felt his chest spark as if a bomb had detonated. It rippled a paralyzing pain into his ribcage, collapsed it inward, and crippled his entire frame by destroying his enterprise at the core.

Hohenheim straightened with surprise when Ed suddenly bent himself in half and pressed his forehead to his knees. "Ed?" he asked with concern. He turned the wheelchair to face him and found Ed's tight expression alarming. Ed's features had twisted up into a permanent wince, and Ed covered his face with a shaking hand. Hohenheim knelt down in panic. "Ed, are you in pain?" he asked, grasping the boy's shoulders to lift him. Ed wanted nothing to do with this, and fought to keep himself firmly bent. Ed choked, a loud and grunting sound through his open lips, and although Hohenheim had never heard it before, it was recognizable the way human sounds were recognizable. With that fist cry of deep sorrow Hohenheim relaxed to give the boy space.

Ed's breath was rapid, and directly after the harsh choke, Ed began a deep whining. It was a stomach clenching sound, and it came again, and louder, before Ed broke an audible sob. Even in hysteria he was ashamed. He closed his fingers over his eyes to hide the sudden rush of tears, but his exposed mouth twisted in anguish.

"Edward," Hohenheim whispered, sliding his hand to Ed's back and rubbing gently. "It's going to be okay." He hadn't any skill comforting the boy. When Edward was younger Trisha used to lift him to her shoulder and rub her cheek affectionately into the side of the boy's small head until Edward could meet her gaze. She said this was Nuzzling, and Hohenheim found the act simply breathtaking in its beauty. In comparison he had never been able to stop the boys from crying. They wanted only their mother. With Edward now much older, the path to comfort seemed even more obscure, and he was left with their fundamental relationship being Edward's discomfort with them even touching.

Edward's tears became rough very quickly and developed into a form of blubbering hysterics. They were hard for him to handle and Ed was straining out his breaths in frame rattling heaves of sobbing as if he were pushing his tears up from his stomach. The crying looked painful and this frightened Hohenheim. "Edward, listen to me," he said, placing some strength in his voice. "You need to relax; you don't seem strong enough to do this now."

Ed yelled in response to this. It was a true cry of anger, and one that allowed Hohenheim to detect the shrill pitch that was common only in Edward's childhood voice and had gone all but dormant with his increase in age. While still young Edward learned loud bawling made him a spectacle and stopped when he was six. To Hohenheim's knowledge, Alphonse never figured this out, even with Edward limiting himself to short screaming outbursts.

"Edward, I know you are upset."

Ed let out another sharp cry and tipped his face to his knees in order to free his hand and slap Hohenheim away. Hohenheim withdrew with confusion. Ed was waving for him to leave, inhaling as fast as he could, and sobbing out every ounce of breath.

"Ed, this is not good for you," Hohenheim said, adapting a stern worried tone. Ed's body seemed to be collapsing in on itself, with shoulders pulled in tight, and everything not involved in sorrow limp and weighted with fatigue. "Ed!" Hohenheim grabbed Ed's shoulders and gave the boy a shake.

Ed screamed, "What am I doing here!" Hohenheim was stunned. "Why! Why am I here! Why!" Ed lifted his head a bit and sniffled heavily. "Why am I here!"

Hohenheim bent down to Ed's line of sight and tears were streaming from his son's golden eyes. They looked glazed with the water, and the expression inside them was lost. "You don't remember what happened?" he asked softly.

"I don't remember anything!" Ed cried. "I don't remember anything!"

"How the gate came? Why you went through it?" He laid his hand back in Ed's hair. His heart went out to the boy. He had assumed Ed was not sharing this memory, but to find it was missing, he could only imagine the desertion. When he had crossed he had come with his mind. The gate wanted whatever it could have, and he feared it trying to spoil his son's. "You can't remember what happened before the gate arrived?" he asked.

"No!" Ed sobbed, shaking his head in a weak disoriented fashion. "I need to get back! I need to! Alphonse is on the other side!" Hohenheim felt his concern slip into pure sadness. He felt Ed's panic, and it was panic that came from frightened comprehension of how real separation was. It was born out of having very little that was real, and needing to protect what little there was. Alphonse was on the other side, and Alphonse was all there was. "He's over there without me! I need to go to him! I made a promise!" Ed did not know the half of it.

Hohenheim pet his hand through Ed's hair. With Ed crying he pushed the loose strains back to keep them from Ed's face. Much of it was soiled from the alley and clumped together as it spread, but the rest shimmered freely over Ed's shoulder.

"What am I going to do?" Ed cried, sobbing to his knees.

Hohenheim felt a profound sadness and also a profound dread. He brushed his thumb across the tip of Ed's forehead and whispered a barely audible, "I am sorry." With Ed waking up to only the tip of this world's cruelty, and the realization of what had happened to him, Hohenheim felt as if he were watching himself arrive in this world years ago. He knew first hand what it felt like to be abandoned by an entire reality, and worse, what it meant to hunger so deeply you'd do anything to get back. "I am sorry Ed." This was a pain for which there was no cure. You could not open a door which responded to alchemy in a world in which alchemy didn't exist. "I am so sorry."

Ed's tears silenced.

In a state of fearful understanding every part of Ed seemed to come to a slow halt and Ed stared wide eyed down to his lap. Ed couldn't imagine the meaning behind Hohenheim's sentiment, but he imagined the worst.

Hohenheim understood the nightmare Ed imagined was faint compared to the truth, and this felt heavy on his shoulders. Ed was going to ask him, and he was going to have to tell the boy.

"What…" Ed's voice was so weak. "…are you…" Ed was hiccupping roughly now that his tears had stopped. "What are you…" Ed sniffled, trying to get his body to cooperate again. "What are you…" Ed lifted a horrified gaze to Hohenheim's sympathetic face. "What…are you saying?"

"You understand, even if I wanted to come and see you boys…" it was painful to even talk about. "…for the longest time…I've been prisoner here as well." This was the best way to explain it. "It seems it's much easier to get in…than it is to get out."

Even in this state, Ed was coming to gain Hohenheim's meaning and implication. His eyes widened so entirely the white was almost fully exposed. Ed's golden pupils seemed to shrink inward, his skin went the color of chalk, and Hohenheim heard every breath of air leave Ed's lungs. It was an expression as close to medical shock as could be maintained while conscious.

"At the very least you're not alone here," Hohenheim said, struggling to remain optimistic for his son. "It was a little different for me I am afraid."

Ed twitched, just the slightest bit, and in a fluid quick motion jerked his head to the side and closed his eyes as if he slammed a door. He didn't want to hear anymore, and he began a slow unsteady shake of his head.

"No," Ed whispered, increasing his movement until his bangs were swinging with force. "That-that can't be true. That can't be true."

"I am sorry."

"Stop saying that!" Ed snapped, jerking up with furious aggression. "You've never been sorry! You'venever done shit to make up for what you've done!" Ed grabbed the arm rest of the wheelchair with purpose and prepared to stand. "I've opened the door before! I can do it again!"

"Ed," Hohenheim cautioned, lifting his hands. Ed's body seemed on the verge of collapse. The boy was shaking so hard he was rattling the chair, and Ed pushed up until he was straight backed and crying.

"I won't just stay here!" Hohenheim tried to stop Ed when he suddenly stood. Ed was behaving as if his body had two arms and two legs. On an aged autopilot the panic and overwhelming desire to destroy the notion this last move through the gate was never leading to a next, Ed stood and moved to walk forward. He toppled into Hohenheim immediately, and Hohenheim did what he could to catch the boy. " Get off me!" Ed cried, trying to shove free. Hohenheim tightened his arms and held his son steady. Ed was fighting invisible demons and was kicking and swinging his fist. "No! NO!" Ed screamed arching his back and trying to get free. "I HATE YOU!"

Hohenheim closed his eyes and ignored the obscenities which started coming. Ed's convincing declarations of hate and vengeance were specifically vicious, but he knew what it was like to be so scared anger was the only sane course available. He knew what it was like to need a face to blame. To need a face to hate so everything else seemed brighter. If after all he'd done, he was sentenced to be the part Ed would hate in order to maintain his sanity and strength, than he supposed he was deserving of such a role and he would take it.

"Edward please," Hohenheim whispered, his voice faint. He'd lost it, and he didn't know when.

Ed struggled much longer than Hohenheim thought possible, and provided a wealth of vulgar phrases Hohenheim was surprised Ed had been exposed to. Ed was convinced he could argue his way out of Hohenheim's grasp, out of the fact his automail was missing, out of the apartment, the building, and straight out of the world. With his eyes closed Hohenheim remained quiet and listened as he restrained the boy until Ed suddenly vomited.

"Ed, you're making yourself ill," Hohenheim said, activating when one of Ed's jerks to move forward changed into a spasm of Ed's throat. Ed was dry heaving, and Hohenheim frantically tipped them to the side so Ed could lean over his arm and face the floor. While struggling Ed had turned in many directions but finally became ill on his side with his back to Hohenheim's chest and his leg tucked under him. "You have to relax and calm down. I am going to have to do more than suggest this soon," Hohenheim said, patting Ed's back in a quick and uneasy rhythm. Ed vomited along side of them and lay shaking and coughing with a string of bile hanging from his lips.

Briefly Hohenheim remembered Alphonse catching a stomach virus when the boy was four and it seemed horribly unfair a child so small had to suffer so greatly. Alphonse was vomiting constantly and there was little they could do but lower his fever. Holding the boy in her lap with a bowl tucked under his chin, Hohenheim remembered Trisha slowly rubbing wide circles on Alphonse's back to calm him. He imitated and began circling his hand on Ed's back as if he were polishing a large surface.

This seemed to have no effect, and as soon as Ed's stomach was under control Ed resumed crying. Hohenheim let this continue and Ed's tears were dripping from his chin and into the mess he'd spit up. "Is this my punishment?" Ed whined, sniffling heavily and wiping at his face with his flesh hand. "For what I've done?" Ed's tone was heartbreaking. Hohenheim felt unqualified to answer this. Suddenly he was thrust into the presumed all-knowing role of a parent, in which he was supposed to answer questions which had none. "After all I've done." Ed sobbed. "I am such a fool." Hohenheim reached up to the bed and felt about for the cloth which had been over Ed's eyes. "Alphonse will probably forgive me for going and getting myself trapped here, even though he shouldn't." Ed found this incredibly upsetting and Hohenheim felt Ed's body start shaking again. "What am I going to do?"

Hohenheim lowered the cloth to Ed, and Ed looked at it clueless with his face leaking everywhere. "Here Ed," Hohenheim said softly, moving it closer to Ed's hand when Ed lifted it in an uncoordinated wobble and grasped the rag with barely any strength. Hohenheim was concerned with this, and watched Ed's navigating hand sway unsteadily as he brought it to his face and wiped with the strength of an infant.

"Is this my punishment?" Ed whispered, ignoring Hohenheim who began helping and wiped the cloth up Ed's wet cheek to his eyes.

"Ed, get yourself around," Hohenheim said, shifting Ed in his arms. Ed was too weak to fight now and lay deathly still when Hohenheim positioned him to be cradled in his arms. Carefully Hohenheim brushed Ed's sweat soaked banks back into his hair, wiped at the boy's tears, and smeared away the snot running down Ed's face. With Ed sitting sideways in his lap he wrapped his arms about his son and held him.

"You're not being punished," he said kindly.

"I failed. The transmutation went horribly. I couldn't follow your notes." Ed's voice was raw from crying. It cracked awkwardly at the beginning and ending of every sentence, and Ed was shaking so hard Hohenheim was beginning to believe the boy was going into shock. "I lost my leg." Ed's eyes welled with fresh tears. Hohenheim laid a hand on the boy's forehead. Ed was far too warm. "Alphonse disappeared." He pulled the skin down below Ed's right eye and tried to get a look at the boy's pupil. "I couldn't reach him." In the aftermath of such incredibly hard crying Ed's chest was leaping with hiccups barely a second apart. "I put his soul in the armor and…lost my arm."

Hohenheim offered a warm smile. "I knew you put his soul in the armor the second I saw him." He pet an affectionate hand through Ed's hair. The roots were damp with sweat and the heat rising from Ed was unnatural. "You were always so resourceful."

Ed's face twisted with disgust. "You say it like it's an accomplishment!" Ed sniveled pitifully. "It was an act of desperation! To save his life! I would have given everything." Ed's eyes adapted a deep and intimidating determination. "I put a transmutation circle on every part I thought they'd want." The venom and strength in Ed's voice, and from his crippled form, was frightening. "And I..." Ed's expression slipped into one of fear. The tight brow and twisted fashion of Ed's mouth relaxed to a passive worried frown. "I remember doing that again." Ed closed his eyes trying to better grasp his own memory. "I remember drawing on my chest." Ed reached up and ever so gently touched the cotton over his heart. "It was right there on my heart…and on my head." Hohenheim watched a new set of tears squeeze from Ed's eyes and drip back over his ears into his hair. Ed's chest hitched with an unsettling breath. "Why?"

Hohenheim considered this information. Ed's account left plenty of holes and unknown variables. Almost any equation could be fashioned from drawing arrays, and drawing them on a human body. What was he to suggest? That Ed had wanted to call the gate? That Ed had perhaps even wanted to enter it? That Alphonse had? Hohenheim felt a moment of panic bloom. Suggesting any type of equation without a solution, and worse, one that might have possible detrimental outcomes, would leave Ed rattled and frantic. What Ed needed now was an answer. Hohenheim felt this strongly. If he could provide an answer, than he could provide peace, even if it was only temporarily. So he offered Ed the most reassuring tone he could and tried to stay positive without lying or misleading.

"When I found you last night, your body was in a state of great distress. It's possible until you're recovered, your memories won't return. Or will return slowly."

"Did he die?" Ed cut right to the chase. With what little strength Ed had he reached to Hohenheim's shirt and yanked at the lapels. "Did he die? Do you know? Did he? Did I come here trying to save him? Did I end up here offering my body?" Ed broke a wild and hysterical sob. "You have to tell me what you know!" Ed's body was near seizure. "Did he die! Did I try to save him! Is he dead! Is Alphonse dead!" Ed's eyes filled with new tears and Hohenheim felt his mouth dry out with these questions. There was no way for him to know the answer.

"That's possible," he said softly. He couldn't lie, and Ed broke out crying at once. Much of the boy's strength had been used, so it was loud weepy tears. "It's possible to escape death your soul came here again." Ed pushed his face into Hohenheim's shirt and Hohenheim went stiff. It was the last thing he expected Edward to do. His son was rubbing his face into his chest the way Trisha rubbed her cheek into the boys when she loved them. Edward was nuzzling him. It was the first time he had felt an act of affection from his son in years. He was certain the very last time had been when Edward was five and had reached into the grass and pulled his hand back screaming.

A honey bee as fat and fluffy as a clover blossom was wiggling its way free with its stinger deep in Edward's tiny pointer finger. From the kitchen sink Hohenheim heard Ed's crying and left running to the boy. Then, with Ed in his lap trying to get a handle on himself, Hohenheim plucked the stinger from Ed's finger while explaining how it worked. Ed was frightened with the small black bead the bee had left pumping venom, but also fascinated with the fact it had stung knowing it would die. "You see Edward," Hohenheim had said, stroking Edward's head and holding the boy's finger as carefully as he would a toothpick. "It is possible to find things in life worth dying for, and the little bee knew that." Directly after these words Ed pulled his finger from Hohenheim's grasp and turned around in the man's lap. Edward didn't speak, and his tears hadn't stopped, but Hohenheim remembered the intensity of the hug Ed gave him. Ed had wrapped strong arms about his neck and rested on his shoulder contently.

"Can I save the bee?" Ed had asked, giving a long sniffle. "If I give it back its stinger?" Hohenheim remembered how this question had warmed his heart, and he stood up squeezing his son as hard as he thought he could.

"If you can find him." He had lied, carrying Ed to the kitchen for some lemonade and a piece of the banana bread Trisha had made that morning. "If you can find him Edward."

Ed had been comforted by the fact he could save the bee, even without searching for the bee or realizing he hadn't kept the stinger. That comfort transferred from Edward into a hug Hohenheim remembered clearly as a child's thank you, and so today, with Edward pressing into his chest and wailing, he didn't think he could find the translation. Edward was acting irrationally, and it gave Hohenheim an overwhelming sense of guilt he was able to take something as precious from Edward as affection, when the boy wasn't certain he was giving it. "Edward," Hohenheim said, trying to gain the boy's attention. "But Edward, you have to consider the exchange," he said, watching the top of Edward's golden head press right and left in his shirt. "That in exchange for your life Alphonse would be alive."

"Dante said equivalent exchange is a fairy tale!" Ed cried, screaming out his words in anger before whining miserably. "She's such a bitch!" Hohenheim chuckled. Yes, she certainly had her moments.

"You don't think it's probable your sacrifice would equate his life?" Hohenheim asked. He believed logic would be the only thing to pull Edward from his fit of sorrow. He cast it forward quickly, knowing if Edward didn't bite down on this, he'd cast again until he found bait that worked. This could not continue. "In what fairy tale have you read of one giving their life for another in vain?" Ed stopped rubbing his face and sniffled. "If you came here to save him, then you have succeeded, don't you think?" Ed was silent as he chewed on this idea, and Hohenheim felt a ray of hope. "Isn't that equivalent exchange?"

Ed turned his face upward and met Hohenheim's eyes. "Do you know that to be true?" Ed asked, voice shaking with uncertainty and desperation. Ed wanted it to be.

"It seems very likely to me," Hohenheim said, forcing simple answers absent of analytical science. Ed was not entirely convinced and his expression tensed with panic. "I promise Ed." Hohenheim felt himself struggle. He was coming so very close to lying. He couldn't be sure, and he'd never know for a fact, neither of them could. He felt himself staring at the stinger in Edward's finger. All he had to do was tell Ed he could search for the bee. "I am sure Alphonse is safe," he whispered. "I feel it."

Ed collapsed with these words. He exhaled everything in his lungs and let his head fall back in utter cessation. "Thank god," Ed whispered. "…thank god." Ed sniffled out a few additional tears but was calming quickly under exhaustion and peace.

"It's all right Ed," Hohenheim whispered, sweeping the boy with his eyes. Ed was sticky with perspiration, his hair was matted and damp from his body's sweat, and he smelled heavily of vomit. His frame rattling shakes were calming, but Hohenheim worried they may not be able to fade entirely. Ed's fingers were twitching unsteadily as if Ed's nerve impulses would not take rest. "Okay now?" Hohenheim asked, feeling thin ice beneath them. Edward didn't answer. He swallowed heavily collecting himself. "Now you'd be embarrassed if you could see yourself," Hohenheim teased warmly. "Let's get you a hot bath and some dinner." Ed was worn to the bone and remained silent. "You can reside with me as long as you like Edward."

"…Will you stay this time?" Ed whispered. Hohenheim heard fear and bitter hate lurking in Edward's tone. It seemed he would never live down what he had done.

"Of course." Hohenheim ran his hand softly through Ed's tangled hair before forcing an optimistic chuckle. "This is my apartment after all." He raised his arm propping Ed into a sitting position and Ed was eager to move. Ed's flustered self consciousness was returning full force and he was embarrassed and wanted up and off. Carefully Hohenheim rose to his feet hoisting Ed's arm over his neck and supporting Ed's wobbly stance. "Does this pull your arm too much?"

"No," Ed muttered. His blonde strains were coming to hang off the center part in his hair like an old mop and Ed gave a soft toss of his head to knock them from his face. "Sorry about puking on the floor." Ed looked at his vomit with further embarrassment. The small puddle was a crude product of the awkward moment that just conspired. "I don't normally cry like this, for the record," Ed said, managing to force a bit of confidence into his voice. "This is a bad time for me."

Hohenheim began leading the way to the lavatory and cracked a half smile with this comment. Ed sounded as if he were disconnecting a phone conversation and not explaining the open burst of weeping that took him as violently as a seizure.

"That's all right," Hohenheim reassured. He was lifting Ed's weight enough to practically drag the boy and Ed was annoyed.

"This only works…when you have two legs Hohenheim. Why did you decide to do this?" Ed tipped his head to the side and wiped his right cheek on his shoulder. His face was damp with his past tears and his eyes were fat swells.

"It can work with someone shorter than you." Hohenheim knocked the lavatory door gently with his foot and let it swing open before leading Ed in.

"Alphonse was the one who inherited your height," Ed said slowly, tired but still disgusted. "Even when we were younger he was already getting taller than me." Hohenheim leaned Ed into the lavatory sink as delicately as one were propping a vase. Attached to the back wall in the right corner it had three inches of extended enamel to provide a meager shelf. The room was narrow. It was unpainted, but still housed what this part of the country considered an impressive center drain paw foot tub to the immediate left, and a soup pot sized cast iron enamel pedestal sink and toilet. Ed immediately gripped the cold surface of the sink's rim for balance and kept his leg rigidly stiff so as not to throw off his balance. "It's rather obnoxious since I am older than him."

Hohenheim reached down and turned the far brass knob on the tub. The building's plumbing was old and for a moment nothing happened. No water emerged and the effect was that of flicking a dead light switch. Quickly Hohenheim turned the knob on and off a few times before trying the cold. Immediately the pipes sputtered. They fed straight up from below and the change in pressure and stress caused the entire fixture to shake. The water burst free in a wild spurt to the sound of a loud cough and then ran smoothly. "Plumbing is more stable in Amestris," Hohenheim said. He turned the hot on and tested the warm water coming in. "Alchemy can certainly make solid piping. So I am afraid in parts of this world plumbing is either still a luxury or poorly crafted." Ed was disgusted and let his expression twist with the stomach churning repugnance this world was creating in comparison to his own. It was like being given the view of a dirty window when you were used to clean glass.

Hohenheim found Ed's expression of repulsed aggravation familiar and brightened on sight of the son he knew. "You look just like you used to wearing that expression."

"I wish you wouldn't talk about the past so much."

Hohenheim returned his gaze to the filling water and let his fingers stray under the running tap. "I am sorry Ed," he said softly. "Much of what I have is the past." He remembered the way the house he built was slightly crooked but Trisha loved it just the same. "My life and everything I valued is in the past. In your world."

"My world is still there," Ed said angrily, frantically trying to keep his strength. Ed gave a small cough trying to abandon the raspy tones of his abused throat. "Stop talking like it's not." Hohenheim didn't respond to this. Ed wasn't ready to hear the truth yet. "And Al is alive over there," Ed said, sounding cheerfully relieved and almost serene with Alphonse's safety. Hohenheim swallowed heavily. He hated lies. "For the times being…that's…ss…enoughs to..." Hohenheim looked up when Ed's words slurred and stopped awkwardly within his sentence. Ed's head was drooping a bit, but the boy noticed his look of alarm and became annoyed. "I am… fine."

"Do you need help undressing?"

"Get out," Ed ordered flatly.

Hohenheim shut off the water and left to the kitchen. He didn't agree to Ed tending to himself. He returned to the stove to check the pork chops and moved them to a plate before returning to the lavatory. Physics said Ed wouldn't be able to move because he lacked the ability to raise or lower himself. Ed found this revolting and looked hideously annoyed when Hohenheim returned and stood in front of the balanced, yet trapped, boy.

"My chest hurts," Ed complained, blinking slowly. "Badly, and my head feels…" Hohenheim expected as much and was not surprised. He reached to the bottom of Ed's shirt and pulled it up and off Ed's head. He left it anchored via Ed's single arm before popping the button on Ed's pants.

Ed's hips jerked as if stung by the touch. "Wha-stop!" Ed cried, jerking again as if he were restrained instead of incapable of moving. "I want to undress myself!" Ed was horrified with Hohenheim's presumption and his own inability to even bat the man off. "You are not to dress or undress me!" Ed rasped, chest heaving.

Hohenheim gave a slow nod. At this point he was impressed Ed was still able to talk and stand. Ed's eyes were very swollen. It seemed a chore just to keep them open. "I am sorry." Hohenheim brought his hands to Ed's rib cage and steadied him. "I'll just keep you upright."

Ed lifted his hand, the minute he didn't need it propping himself up, and gave Hohenheim's shoulder a weak scolding smack. "I undress myself, understand?" Ed asked, throwing his shirt to the floor. "Not anyone else." Ed paused to rub at his face and eyes.

Ed's chest was scrawny and Hohenheim worried about the cold apartment on Ed's unclothed body. He had planned to undress Ed quickly, so Ed moved seamlessly from warm clothing to warm water. "I don't want you to become cold Ed."

"And I'll undress at the speed I want," Ed said flatly. Even as Ed spoke his upper half gave a hearty shutter in the frigid air and Hohenheim let his displeasure show in his face.

"You've exhausted yourself."

"If there's no automail here, I am a cripple Hohenheim," Ed said angrily, before paling with the definition of his own words. Without the automail he was left unable to stand, unable to completely move himself, dress himself, or even bathe himself. It felt like a tremendous retraction in time.

Suddenly he was six again, and was in his upstairs bathroom with the white titles and fluffy yellow towels. Hohenheim was looming over him. Ed couldn't mentally deny, although he did not embrace, the fact Hohenheim had probably bathed him as a child, because the only memories he had came later when he found it uncomfortable Hohenheim would undress him. He remembered calling out for his mother.

Hohenheim was a stranger. With the travels Hohenheim was more a visitor than a father, and as a child, right before Ed remembered the man leaving, he had felt a very clear and very unsettling sense of invasion and uncertainty when Hohenheim would advance towards him. Hohenheim had seemed very tall, and very scary, so all domestic tasks from feeding to bathing were awkward with this stranger. Ed broke into tears sitting in front of the filling tub with Hohenheim undressing him. He didn't know how to get the man away from him, and he didn't know how to explain this felt unbearable, so he cried, and Trisha came.

Trisha had arrived when Ed's panic was becoming serious. The large foreign man Ed was told to obey as his father, and therefore took such liberties, was pawing clothes off his tiny body with hands the size of a bears. Trisha came looking anxious and confused Ed was crying while Hohenheim was tending to him, but arrived with empathetic acceptance. She had married her husband and given birth to her children, and from them both she wielded the intimate knowledge they shared with true mastery. Hohenheim wasn't offended when she shewed him aside and knelt down to Ed's silent tear streaked face. She brought with her the smell of baking cinnamon, and Ed remembered the clear image of her leaning forward and the way the loose strands of her hair moved over her forehead and growing smile. She brought comfort, and playfully took Ed's face in her hands and pressed his cheeks together. Whispering a rhyme about mice living in a shoe there was no part of her that was upset her son was scared of his father. With perfect patience and grace she understood what Ed needed.

Standing in Germany, cold and sick, Ed remembered his mother before he could remind himself not to. Now was not the time. He could not handle remembering mom now.

Hohenheim felt Ed's unease through his tense body. Ed seemed to have drifted somewhere mentally, but his expression was cut to the heart. Hohenheim could see Ed's very real and very intense fear this might be the future. "Ed, people in this world loose limbs too," he reassured. Ed gave a waking blink and lifted his gaze. "I don't mind helping you if you need it."

Ed grunted with revulsion. There was something much deeper than the awkwardness of Hohenheim being allowed to become this personal. Ed was sick with the idea of reliance, and even something as insignificant as pity from Hohenheim. Yet, it stood in stark comparison to his lack of options. There was no one else. This would be a surrender because there would have to be tolerance.

Hohenheim sensed Ed's resigned aggravation and tried to help. "Let's consider this…temporary," he said softly. With Ed looking half alive and so fatigued it was taxing to conduct even instinctive functions such as breathing and blinking, Hohenheim could see Ed's sour illness for having to allow such intimate interaction between them. Ed looked faint with self disgust. Hohenheim wanted to, in any way possible; make this easier for the boy. "We'll work on getting you what we can right away," he said, keeping a calm directive tone. Ed's emotions were intense for someone so physically slighted. They felt thick and almost suffocating in the steam filling lavatory and Hohenheim wasn't going to add to them. One of them had to stay rational.

Ed lifted his single hand and popped the second button on his pants. "Juss…hold me up," Ed slurred, before swallowing heavily to correct his speech. "Just keep me steady."

Hohenheim nodded. The smell of unfinished wood was entering the air and adding the odor of the old pine. His lavatory was a mere coffin in size between all the fixtures. The bare room was neglected and never even white washed. Moisture brought out the aroma of the naked wood as powerfully as someone chopping it.

"In this world automail is only called prosthetics," Hohenheim said. "They are false limbs like yours, but are not at the performance level you know." Ed jerked his fly down in shaky uncoordinated tugs. "Still, between the two of us, I am sure we can modify something."

Once Ed finished his fly his pants dropped to a pool at his ankle and left him completely bare. Held upright Ed looked like a shark victim, and the white to his skin and limp way his hair hung separated with dirt and grease made him too sad for words. "Without the automail there is nothing I can do myself," Ed said pitifully. His tone held the cold solidarity of his fate on this side of the gate. Directly after these words Ed forced his dry throat to swallow as if physically determined to stomach this crippling stress.

"I'll help you get in," Hohenheim said, stepping back slowly so Ed would not be harshly or quickly moved while nude. He could tell his son felt incredibly vulnerable. Ed turned into a ramrod straight body of stone as soon as he stood there naked and waiting. "I'll talk you through it," Hohenheim reassured.

Ed clung to the side of Hohenheim's arm uneasily. He tried to move his leg in a way which was helpful, but being moved under the full power of a fully clothed someone else was intimidating. Undressed Ed felt nauseous with the flighty feeling of nervous shame and humiliation. Hohenheim had taken full control of him.

"I'll lift you." Hohenheim announced his action before he began but Ed startled just the same. Ed was not hard to lift. The boy was skin and bones and curled his leg upward at the edge of the tub so he was transferred over it smoothly

Ed stiffened the moment he touched water. "This is cold!" Hohenheim sat Ed down with him fussing. Ed reached for the tub's brass knob and turned on the hot. "This is freaking freezing!" Ed began shivering violently.

Hohenheim turned it off quickly. "Edward you're simply too warm." This was true. The fever was low grade and helping to absorb Ed's energy. It hadn't become dangerous or severe enough Hohenheim had done anything about it.

Ed's entire body was quivering, and his teeth were beginning to chatter. The sound was the rattling of dainty china. "I am not that warm!" Ed reached back for the facet but Hohenheim intercepted and covered the knob with his own. Ed snarled with insult. He grabbed the side of the tub to raise himself before stalling out like a faulty car. On impulse he was moving with four limbs when he only had two. This hit like a slap in the face. The reminder, the continuous inability, every time it was a blow, and Ed felt like he was in an endless boxing match. "Get me out!"

"You aren't ready yet," Hohenheim said. Ed's single leg was working to keep him firmly balanced while in the water, and his flesh hand was holding the rim of the tub. Ed was rather coordinated in the bath and Hohenheim was impressed. He was initially worried Ed might be wobbly and in danger of slipping under, but this didn't seem to be the case. "You need to stay in a while more." This was a polite way of saying no, and Ed heard it clearly. Suddenly he was being made to take a bath when he was of age to make his own decisions. Suddenly he was put in the tub like a child, and like a child, couldn't get out.

Ed tipped his face down and stared at the water in silent anger. The movement slid his bangs forward and a few dipped into the surface and spread out like roots. Hohenheim watched this with uncertainty. He tried to stay reasonable. "Ed, you're hair still needs to be washed." Ed couldn't stay filthy, and he was sure his son didn't want to be filthy.

"Get me a wash cloth!" Ed yelled, lifting his head up. His eyes were heavy and Hohenheim could see the drop in fever draining what little there was to Ed's capability. "Then, get out of here!" Ed pointed toward the door.

Hohenheim went to the small sink and lifted the cloth he kept on its rim. He picked it up thoughtfully and wet it in the tap where he could lather it with his bar of soap. He might not know Edward well, but his years of existence had given him a keen sense of dedication. He didn't need his son's acquaintance to feel Edward testing him. Ed was desperately seeking the line in the sand between them, and Hohenheim was sure Ed had every intention of destroying that line as soon as he could locate it. In a frantic attempt to assert and assure himself of his own independence, Ed wanted to push until he found resistance so he could break through it.

Inevitably this would force Hohenheim to offer it, and he was deliberately slow soaping the rag. He would have to handle this delicately. He was going to be forced to announce his overruling decision to stay in the room if Ed insisted he leave, and Ed knew this as well. Alone Ed could not properly bathe himself and could not get out of the tub. This was inarguable reality. "Think you're bathing me?" Ed asked, voice dripping with hate. "Hm?" Ed twisted his face up as if he'd be ill. "Do you think that's what's happening here?"

Hohenheim felt the beginning flicker of irritation. "Edward, be reasonable."

"I'll be freaking reasonable," Ed sneered. "Give me that, and get out." Ed extended his hand for the washcloth. Hohenheim turned around with it and looked at his son. Ed was like a rabid animal chained to the tub.

He relinquished the cloth politely. "If you are embarrassed I can get you a towel for your lap." He wasn't going to discuss how Ed's lack of modesty was surprising to him. Ed didn't so much as tolerate his unnecessary touch, and yet here was the boy sitting as naked as the day he was born in a tub of water. With one leg missing, and the other required to the ankle inward toward Ed's pelvis to create a stable foundation, Ed was as exposed as someone spreading their legs on purpose. Hohenheim had to imagine this meant something to the boy, even if Ed was not a modest person.

"I am not embarrassed!" Ed cried, fisting the cloth with shaking outrage. Ed's face was flushing and Hohenheim couldn't identify if it was fever or a blush. "I feel furious! Physically in rage Hohenheim!" Hohenheim was taken back with this description. "Ending up here and depending on you is the last thing I ever wanted to do! I…" Ed stopped abruptly with a small dry heave and leaned over the rim of the tub.

"What is it?" Hohenheim asked, becoming alarmed.

Ed gave his head a quick shake. He hung onto the rim of the tub looking over it like a seasick passenger on an ocean liner. "I am going to be sick," Ed said, voice nervous.

"Ed, you need to relax," Hohenheim said angrily. Enough was enough. "You're not in a condition that can support this type of behavior." Hohenheim stepped forward and took the washcloth from Ed's limp hand. Ed was breathing heavily with his cheek resting on the cold side of the tub. Hohenheim dipped the rag into the warm water. Ed didn't move when he washed it up the boy's back, but Ed's body turned to stone. "Independence will come back to you, but you must be healthy," Hohenheim said, scrubbing gently about Ed's shoulders. Although Ed's pale skin looked clean, he knew his son was laying in the alley trash before his arrival. "You know what I am saying is true," he said firmly. "So stop this. It's uncalled for."

Hohenheim felt a parental duty awakening he hadn't felt in years. It gave him strength and a level of final authority he had not possessed beyond Ed's second year. Once Ed began speaking and walking the boy became another entity instead of an accessory, and this was confusing to him. Suddenly Ed knew what he did and did not want, and although irrational and capricious, had the power to think. Ruling over another life, even a life he had created, seemed something he could not do with the indefiniteness it required. Trisha did so with unwavering certainty. When she was pleased with Ed's behavior she rewarded him with stickers or treats she believed he had earned. When she was displeased she told him so, and punished him in her own caring way. This totalitarian mentality felt burdensome and unfitting to him. He did not have Trisha's parental compass, and so did not always feel confident making mundane decisions. Those of punishment and reward were infinitely harder with Edward's child self. He had no experience with small children. In traveling you never interacted with small children, only older boys, adolescents, and men. He had to imagine Edward as an adolescent would be something he was capable of, but Edward as a three year old was difficult. Simple events caused odd reactions in him, and made him, in a way he had never before experienced, feel uncomfortable with his own mind.

However, before Edward's second year, when the boy was a life form that barely moved, and was complacent, he was comfortable. When it was time for Ed to nap, he put the boy in his bed. When it was time for Ed to eat, he brought the boy to Trisha. He was governed by cosanity, and so was Edward. There was no variable of independent thought, and he had the authority of the world's flow.

In hindsight he was privately embarrassed to admit simple acts of his infant son were alarming to him. When Edward was learning to crawl the boy's transition from his blanket to cold hard wood caused an unreasonable concern within Hohenheim. He remembered it distinctly because it rushed up on him irrationally. There was comedy in assigning emotion to one thread within a tapestry, and this defined how a single human life was difficult to understand when there were many humans, and with the knowledge it took many to accomplish what little they could. Edward, and then Alphonse, gave him the strangest sensation of his entire existence: immediate and true fret for individual life.

Touching Edward's small infant body was disconcerting to him. His hands were careless mitts capable of crushing Edward's entire skull, or dismembering him without any effort. Lifting the baby made him nervous, and setting Edward back on his blanket with the boy squirming and sucking on toys or hand, was an act he preferred to call Trisha for. He feared his own strength, and the hundreds inside him, to a degree he had never realized or imagined possible.

Trisha called him a silly nervous man, and would laugh lovingly when she found him fretting over simple domestic tasks. Teasing she would ask, "What are you doing Van?" Often while he was struggling to confess she would lie sweetly that she was busy and could not help. "Just put Edward back on his blanket where he wants to be."

Trisha welcomed him touching or holding the children. Playing with him, she would come deposit them into his arms, and laugh and kiss him. The boys were also blissful unaware of how easy it would be for something as old and powerful as him to squelch away their delicate life like a candle flame. Through everything, and even when he began to change, his strength, ability, and even his illness was never the enemy to her. She loved to see him with the children.

From the tub Ed ignored Hohenheim's increasingly dazed expression and distracted mannerisms. Despite himself he found the hot water incredibly relaxing and desirable. His body was growing so heavy it was destroying even his ability to become alarmed with his own fatigue. He lay slumped into the side with his eyes closed enjoying the massaging sensation the scrubbing cloth gave him. The friction of the wet cotton against his bare skin was similar to the leather of Alphonse's armor hands. When they would travel and his body would ache, Alphonse would rub his muscles with a grip that never tired.

Hohenheim left his memory of Trisha rocking a fat baby Alphonse, who would later grow fluffy blonde hair and an unnatural desire to catch Resembool fireflies, and refocused his attention on the current day. He worried about Ed falling asleep or even slipping unconscious while in the tub and sought out conversation.

"What did you do after you lost your limbs?" he asked. He found it curious how quickly Ed relaxed with someone bathing him. Having never experienced anything similar he found it fascinating Ed's familiarity with participation during such a private act gave him the ability to find it calming.

"After ward…you remember the Rockbells…." Ed muffled his words out as if half asleep. "They took care of us."

Hohenheim smiled. "They're good people." He remembered the fiery young girl with the aspirations of a man. She did what she said, went out and made a name for herself, and raised her son on her own. When he learned the child died, tragically, he found it appropriate she was left with a new child to take care of. Her son had grown to an age where he had at least populated. "Pinako had a granddaughter." Ed grunted softly in affirmation. "Your age?" Ed grunted again. "Were you friends?" Hohenheim imagined Ed must have been friends with this girl. In Resembool, where Trisha was from, there were not many people. Everyone knew each others circumstances and all could be relied upon for help. It was a small safe town. Pinako was close, within walking distance, so it would have been convenient as well. "You would have grown up together," Hohenheim said thoughtfully. He tried to remember a small girl in his home when he was there. A small thing with blonde hair wearing pink. It was difficult. It was much easier to remember Alphonse's plastic dinosaurs and the blue and green colors of the boys' blocks.

"Yes," Ed said sleepily, cracking an eye. "We are friends."

Living so close and aging together, Hohenheim found a hopeful smile ticking at the side of his mouth. It was likely she was his son's first kiss. Being a female in such close proximity, Ed would have been drawn to her the way a male human was drawn to a female human. "Did you ever date?" Hohenheim asked. Ed's eyes opened with confused intrigue. He didn't know what to make of the question, or the fact Hohenheim thought to ask it. "If it's too personal, you don't have to answer." Hohenheim slid his hand under Ed's chest and scrubbed over his son's ribs and down his stomach.

Ed was quiet for a moment before answering in a neutral tone that took no offense. "No," Ed said simply. Ed remembered Winry's room, Winry's smell, and the way her shirt started growing outward the way his did not, and the way her hugs suddenly felt different. That was about the time it occurred to him. "It didn't work out," Ed said flatly. Hohenheim looked disappointed and Ed found this surprising. Why would this man care what he did. "We were friends though."

Hohenheim abandoned this topic with a bit of embarrassment. He hated to think of himself as a tired old human who found the activities of one small boy so captivating. This felt largely in opposition to what he was, but like a guilty pleasure, he couldn't deny he wanted to know. He wanted to know his son. "I am glad," he said softly. This was the truth, and he felt pleased. "I am glad to know you had friends." Ed was doing well in Amestris.

Hohenheim received the glass bowl he reserved for guests and used it to wash Ed's hair. It was a fine china with tiny blue flowers painted about the edges. He doused Ed's head and scrubbed it with his right hand while his left hung tight to Ed's arm to stabilize the boy. Ed could keep himself steady if untouched, but didn't have the foundation to combat any type of shoving. Hohenheim washed in silence with the bathroom adapting the chalky smell of the baking soda he had sprinkled into Ed's hair as shampoo. Whether Ed was familiar with this or not, he seemed too tired to care, and sat with his head turning into a paste.

Hohenheim felt tranquil laboring at the single task of washing Ed's hair and broke the comfortable silence that had bloomed. "Dr. Gratter is a good friend of mine." Ed was enjoying the massage on his scalp and said nothing. "We should visit him tomorrow." Hohenheim rinsed Ed's hair as carefully as he could. The warm water and drop in fever had Ed half asleep. "I am sure he can help us get something to make life…manageable for you."

"I want you to leave me in here," Ed said, leaning heavily into the hand Hohenheim had holding the boy up.

Hohenheim was shocked. "In the tub?"

"To relax."

Hohenheim finished the last rinse of Ed's hair and looked at the blonde strains. Wet they were a solid gold blanket fanning down Edward's upper back. He was proud Ed had inherited the color from him, but also embarrassed, as if he'd taken something on Trisha.

"I'll be fine by myself old man," Ed grumbled sourly.

"Then I'll step out for a moment." Hohenheim helped Ed lean back into the tub. Ed closed his eyes at once and sighed the heavy sigh of someone finding rest after a long walk. "From the apartment Ed." Ed responded with a disinterested hum. "Just to get you some clothes, I won't be gone long." Ed repeated the same monotone sound. "Can you care for yourself while I am gone?" Ed was implying this, but Hohenheim felt he had to hear it.

"Go," Ed said miserably.

Hohenheim left with the lavatory full of warm steam. He wrapped himself for the winter weather and departed. He wanted to be quick, and felt confident Ed could add water as he became cold. He wasn't expecting Ed to slip back into such a deep sleep he woke the boy with his lips turning blue.

"Edward, what is wrong with you?" Hohenheim asked, jerking Ed up by his arm. Ed awoke completely disoriented with his teeth chattering. Hohenheim's strength yanked Ed's top half up causing Ed to slip sideways and loose all stability. This scared them both. Neither of them were expecting this, and Hohenheim looped his arm into the water and about Ed's torso and pulled him out. Ed was difficult to manage slick with water and thin as a rail. Quickly Hohenheim sat the boy on the rim of the tub to take Ed's weight off his arm so he could move. "Couldn't you feel yourself becoming chilled?" he asked angrily. Ed managed a few incomprehensible words leaning forward and coming around slowly. He was dripping everywhere and the near stream falling from Ed's hair back into the tub made it sound as if it were raining. Hohenheim pressed his hand to Ed's forehead, but Ed was frozen. "Ed, you're cold as ice," he snapped, briefly surprised by his own anger. It was present, and very real. He had not been angry with Ed in years, and he was surprise the emotion took so easily.

"What…happened?" Ed asked, slurring his words out slowly with his eyes barely open. "Where…am…" Ed seemed more than a little confused as to where he was and what was happening. His single arm grabbed at the rim of the tub for balance, before raising to his face.

Hohenheim unplugged the tub and turned the warm water back on. "I am going to sit you back inside and get some warm water to you," he said, beginning to move even as he spoke. He sat Ed back into the few cold inches of water and pulled him closer to the faucet. Ed was like ice, and looked white as snow. He had begun a low deep toned sound of discomfort in his throat and was investigating himself with his hand. Ed reached first to his stumped shoulder and grabbed it with a throated choke of concern before seeming to realize he was naked.

Hohenheim turned on the warm water and used his hand as a guide so it ran down Ed's shoulders and spine like a river. Ed flinched with the sudden warm water and his body gave a great frame rattling shudder.

"Ed, how long were you sleeping?" Hohenheim asked, reaching back for a towel. He brought it to his lap and shook it open. In his rough estimation it would have taken fifteen to twenty minutes for the water to cool to an uncomfortable temperature. That would have left Ed submerged in something disagreeable and becoming worse for nearly the same timeframe. "Ed?"

"What?" Ed slurred, eyes closed and seeming drunk.

Hohenheim shut off the water and tucked his left arm beneath Ed's and held the right side of Ed's chest firmly in order to stand him up. With Ed unable to support his body Hohenheim took the boy against his chest. Ed felt like a bucket of water thrown at him, and was immediately soaking through his clothes. "I can not believe this Ed," Hohenheim said softly. He wrapped the towel about Ed's torso as quickly as possible before lifting him like a bride. "How could you become so careless?" The painful question he didn't speak was, how could I become so careless.

Ed responded as if he were assaulted by the towel. Trapped in the brain numbing fog of a sick person, Ed felt his body wrapped in something before his vertigo changed. Hohenheim scooped Ed up and held him close to give him heat. Ed was absorbing it rapidly but seemed too tired to stay coherent. He didn't speak any further and was like a doll when Hohenheim walked quickly back to the day bed and laid him in it.

Hohenheim was careful to set Ed several inches in to keep him from the edge. He placed Ed's head on his pillow, and with both hands free, racked the sheet and bit of quilt out from under him to keep them dry. Next he rushed for the brown paper bag of clothing he'd bought. He had bought only simple articles of necessity. He knew Edward would have his own taste and was old enough to buy his own clothing. He pulled out Germany's underwear. It was fashioned as a cotton one piece known as a shirt-and-drawers to resemble a short sleeve shirt and standard drawers which buttoned down the middle. He slid Ed's foot into the slit on the main torso before doing the same with the stump. Ed stirred with this and reached down trying to grasp Hohenheim's hand before covering his genitals self consciously. "Go…away," Ed moaned, shivering helplessly.

"Edward, you're going to become sick like this." Hohenheim ignored this comment. He yanked the pant bottom up to his son's waist and tugged the upper half up to Ed's arm. Ed struggled weakly unable to understand these movements and the clothing. Amestris did not have this design and Hohenheim knew this style, like several others, would confuse Ed.

"Get…off me…old man," Ed ordered weakly. "Get…me my underwear." Ed could barely keep his eyes open. "I want my…boxers."

"Edward in this world boxers are people who fight for money." Hohenheim worked the cut off shoulder in before grabbing Ed's flesh wrist and feeding it into the arm hole. He was dressing his son so that Edward's torso and several inches into all limbs were adorned in cotton. It stopped before the knees and was sewn like a tee shirt up top, but it was this world's underwear. Ed didn't want it. He shoved at the cotton and tried to take it off. "Stop it," Hohenheim commanded, brushing Ed's hand aside and doing the buttons down the boy's chest and stomach. "You're cold as death." He pulled the towel to Ed's head and squeezed frantically all about the blonde strains to dry them. Ed slapped at Hohenheim with a disoriented wave before falling entirely asleep.

Hohenheim wrapped Ed in the day bed quilt, and then returned to the lavatory and cleaned up. There were puddles of water on the wood and drips leading to the day bed like bread crumbs.

Ed was sleeping with an expression of pale distress framed in wet tangled hair. He was more exhausted than either of them seemed to know. With Ed fully covered and regaining temperature Hohenheim stepped back and considered the train wreck Edward was bringing to his routine and bouts of concern Ed was waking within him. He tried to reassure himself lying in a cooling tub would not further injure Ed, but his emotional side did not want to hear this. It was convinced something should have been done to prevent, and better correct the situation. Irritably Hohenheim found an extra pillow to add to the day bed and wedged it in along side Ed's head before abandoning the boy.

He ate alone, at the table, watching the quilt rise and fall to the sound of Ed's breathing.


And there is chapter 4! I will rely on you, wonderful readers, to review – and share your valuable thoughts. We are growing darker, as Germany becomes more real.

Chapter 5: Invalidus will be up 2/1/13. …what do you think is in store? : )

Authors Note:
This story contains adult language, violence, and adult themes. As the story progresses the rating will change appropriately. Please properly observe the rating to abide by any governing principles in your life.